Re:GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract
by aeturnum on Friday November 01, 2019 @12:09AM
(#21416217)
I agree with all that I think working on a thing is continuing to bring it into being. Declining to have an opinion is the same as agreeing with the current planned direction.
In that sense, continuing to work for github forwards the net moral "output" of its work. Each wrong or right is weighted differently and though I think we can all agree that there is a direction amplitude is harder.
I just want to add that, in the same sense that quitting github quietly is a tiny blow against ICE, continuing to work for github silently is also clearly supportive of ice. Actions are rarely totally morally neutral, which is ok as long as we don't pretend they are.
Working for ICE as an engineer would be you exercising your power for ICE. But working for GitHub as an engineer, where GitHub is customer-agnostic, doesn't seem like an exercise of power to me. Anyone can use the product you build, it's not specifically for ICE. Similarly if you design a car and some cars of that design get used by ICE, that doesn't seem like an exercise of power in favor of ICE, unless you build features specifically for ICE.
Threatening to quit if GitHub continues to sell to ICE seems like an exercise of power against ICE. Silently quitting and not telling anyone why you quit I would consider a very slight exercise of power against ICE, because over time if it happens enough, businesses that deal with ICE will be less competent that businesses that don't deal with ICE, and that will harm ICE slightly.